


your fire in my veins like blood

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 18:01:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16958856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Soulmate is a very pretty word, dressed up in all the right circumstances and there is the perfect love story for the ages too. It just isn't theirs.Jason is looking at death in the eyes when he finally figures out just what Bruce is supposed to mean to him.





	your fire in my veins like blood

**Author's Note:**

> i can't keep blaming marourin because soulmates!au have always been something i've wanted to do but lbr she played a part in encouraging this.

 

i.

 

He is looking at death in the eyes when he finally figures out just what it all meant from the start.

And it is in his final moments that he puts it all together: The pull that took his feet to Crime Alley on a night where the Batsignal shine brighter than the light pollution in the Gotham sky. The taste of anticipation on the flat of his tongue as his hands move through the familiar motions to work the hubcaps off of the wheel of the Batmobile, and.

The drape of Batman’s shadow when it finally falls over him.

 

All the nights after left him hanging from a single line, breathing something fresh above the asphalt with his lungs expanded to the fullest, thrill pumping like blood in his veins as he makes that swing.

Here is where the difference lies. Jason is breathing in one last breath, has it all adding up in his head until the very last count of zero. Flames licking across his skin, kissing open blisters against his cheeks, and then.

Death becomes him.

 

 

ii.

 

“You knew it from the start. If I never—" Jason doesn’t finish his sentence here but the implications made have always been this blatant show of hand sitting like dead weight between them. Once more. From the start. Made all the worse when Bruce makes sure this continued on a need-to-know basis even after he laid him to rest. "Would you've ever told me?"

“Yes.”

Resignation tastes like a sour little thing on the center of his palate, spreading on the flat of his tongue until it is showing on Jason’s entire expression when he crosses the narrow span of space between them to draw this match to an even too.

“I thought you’re supposed to be a decent liar, old man.”

“You weren't even thirteen, Jason.” Bruce starts because the right thing is always the hardest thing, he thinks, and he has been thinking on it for a long, long while. It was like this from the start, it is like this even now. “I had to wait to tell you, when you were older.” Bruce catches Jason’s eyes, no helmet, no mask, and feels the full weight of that gaze stripped all the way down to say what had always went unsaid. “When you understood what you were getting yourself into.”

“I was fighting crime in green _hotpants_.” Jason bites out at him, and the blame is on them both for this one. Bruce might have opened the Wayne Manor doors to him but Jason was the one to stay. “I'd say we both knew exactly what I was getting myself into when you took me home.”

Bruce doesn't flinch, but Jason doesn't expect him to, not even when the man continues under some kind of misplaced ideation that he did the right thing here.

“It wasn't supposed to end like that.”

Even as Bruce goes resolute and everything else goes muddled, Jason wants this to be the one clear thing here.

“You made your choice. And I died for it.”

 

The anger is strong, is deep, runs like fire through his veins like blood. There is enough fault to go around.

Jason is just tired of taking the brunt of it on the other end of a crowbar.

 

"Do you want me to be apologetic about it?"

Jason has no idea if Bruce's question is meant to sting. It is a damn good attempt in any way. "When did you ever do what I wanted?"

"That doesn't answer my question, Jason."

"You are not asking the right one then."

Things change, but some do not. Jason isn't afraid to look away this time even as Bruce's eyes settle over him.

"Actually, hold that thought, B." The pull between them, the gravity and the weight of each action that carry them through to the exact moment when he knew Bruce is not going to get to the warehouse in time. Where once, his voice would fill the marrow of his bones with warmth, he finds Bruce sinking ice into his veins. Jason finds himself doing the exact same thing. "You don't get to ask for anything, let alone this much from me."

He remembers the stench of his own blood and bile in that dynamite filled warehouse seconds before it blew.

 

 

iii.

 

Soulmates can be explained.

Intertwined, lock and key. In coincidences or luck of the draw. In pulling out the right hand on the wrong night, in fate having not a clue as to what it's done.

When Batman finds a kid in a thin red hoodie fraying at the seams, his hands dirty with grease and knuckles clenched white as he swings the tire iron right into Bruce's midsection with no hesitation, the breath it took out of him meant far more than he wished it could.

Because that, right there, in that _kid_ , is the sum of all of his explanations.

 

Jason looks like what the dog dragged in from the rain when he finally shows up.

What drips off of him is viscous and red, and Jason is surprised he made it here at all. He has one hand holding what feels like most of his insides still inside while he scans the cave looking for anyone except for the one man turning around to see him in such a state. He would be laughing at himself if he still had a breath in him at the turn of karma, and the small miracles that remains.

 

Red Hood doesn’t like being in the cave, but it beats being in the Manor itself where the walls close in on with him right back in the center of it all.

"Where's Alfred?"

On a good day, he has a backdoor to the Batcomputer through Oracle's system and that would be more than enough. On a very bad day, he is lying flat on the surgical table of the cave's medbay, putting in his own IV drip while Batman physically cuts him out of his suit to put him back in more-or-less one piece.

He isn't holding his breath here.

"Asleep."

Bruce shares with the class after a drawl of stale silence even as his fingers have long since started to clean off the blood so they can see that it looks just as bad as they both thought it would be. Jason's helmet clatters to the floor, the domino stays for all the good that it does when Bruce is looking at him like _that._

"Convenient."

That is also the last thing Jason says before he blacks out when Bruce cauterizes the wound to stop the bleeding.

 

Jason opens an eye to find Bruce sitting on a stool next to him.

His heart is steady, his breathing even. He remembers taking all the time to contemplate about life and then it is over. This feels almost anti-climatic to that. Jason closes his eyes again, and he doesn't understand why the pain isn't enough to drive Bruce's expression out of his head.

 

 

iv.

 

Like a bump in the road, some kind of predetermined fate, Jason Todd’s death is set in stone.

"You're my—"

"Shut _up_ , Bruce." It's been years and the green runs thinner in his veins but he can feel the rush of the worst of the Lazarus pit in his ears at the conviction to what Bruce wanted to say. “You're thinking of someone else.”

(He is not.)

Jason continues in the silence that congeals and sets, eyes more blue then green. He makes sure every bone is a mean one when he faces down Bruce, head tilting to the side to smile at him with all his teeth.

“That’s what I thought too.”

 

Reincarnation doesn’t happen in one lifetime.

It happens in two. He comes back but he doesn't come back right, and ain't that a funny thing when his smile goes rightfully feral.

 

 

v.

 

Before all of that though, he is sitting in the Batcave, perched on the console, swinging his legs.

Up along the curve of his ribs, he is all bruises. From last night when he landed too hard against some reinforced steel bars to avoid a particularly hard-hitting punch of the metahuman variety. Stained in deep purple and green and some haunting shade of ugly yellow that won’t fade from underneath the skin, he stands bracing down on all of that pain to ask for more when he dons the Robin uniform for another night.

"I'm not punishing you."

Bruce declares, first and foremost. Voice soft but firm as he drops Jason's pajamas into his lap, meets the frown with the same stern stare that Jason knows by heart.

"You might as well be."

Batman doesn't laugh, not really, but Bruce does, and Bruce always laughs even if Batman never does no matter how clever Robin's puns get.

"You need the rest, Jay."

Jason hates that Bruce isn't deterred even when he tries for cute, eyes wide, mouth a pout, swinging his legs just that much harder until the toe of his boots are kicking into Batman's shin. Bruce goes to unclasp the cape from Jason's collar, and Jason's frown curls into a scowl as his domino goes next at Batman's hand.

"You can't just bench me for a few _bruises_ , B."

Bruce puts his hand on him, fingers curling across his ribs to rub the pad of his thumb against the dull thump of his heart. He applies the barest of pressure and Jason winces, loud.

"A few bruises." Bruce repeats, and the smile doesn't go away even as the tears well up at the rim of Jason's eyes. "Batman will survive without Robin for one night."

 

Survival is a very far thing from living.

They both know that. These are the good memories even if they leave behind a long enduring ache.

 

"Just one night, B?"

"Yes, Jay. Just one."

It is a promise even if he doesn't make it, one even if he doesn't keep it. Jason only lets Bruce go then, grasp going loose, the black of Batman's cape gone from right between the green of his gloves.

 

 

vi.

 

Soulmate is a very pretty word, dressed up in all the right circumstances and there is the perfect love story for the ages.

It just isn't theirs.

 

Back from the dead, mad from the pit, green in his eyes, and with the Lazarus effect shaking deep inside of his bones aside, Jason remembers, in the detached way he gets when the curved dagger of his Kris blade cuts through the Kevlar of Batman's suit, that Bruce was his.

He wants to make it clear, that the past tense here is crucial. They were always a bad match from the start.

"Funny how that goes. To have death _change_ you as a person, doesn't it?" Jason aims to hurt and maim and the thrill of it runs through him to show his hand. "Maybe this whole soulmates thing isn't as enduring as everyone else makes it seem."

For all the happy endings they will never get out of it, soulmates exist. Even if there are no easy first words to latch on to, no marks or colours to convince them both that they are looking at The One. He knows even when there is nothing to show for it. It is walking miles and miles in the other direction to find himself home where he’s never had one before. And he continues because he's never learned to stop.

"And you feel it too, can't you, B? Turns out, I'm not."

Death wields a sharp blade, cutting whatever they had into two messy halves.

Even through the voice modulator of his helmet, the solemnity is hard to miss. Jason repeats this, not for Bruce's benefits but for his own.

"Not anymore."

 

Death, it seems, renders their soulbond moot.

 

 

vii.

 

He lights one up.

In the dark, it looks a lot like the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

"You don't have to be nice about it." Jason tells him, eyes screwed tight, his fingers a death grip against Bruce's shirt as the last remaining barrier between their bare skin. "I don't need it to feel good at all."

Jason's skin holds a temperature as though he is burning right up inside when Bruce's hand finally fold over him. The Y of his autopsy scar is a prominent thing. One that Bruce knows by heart like he was the one to make the first cut. Jason keeps going.

"Admit it, B." There is scorn in his voice, venom on his tongue, the taste of it bitter with each word. "You wish it was anyone but me."

Bruce tilts his head to kiss him, along the line of his jaw until his mouth is pressing against his. He feeds these words to Jason like it is his next breath. "I wish it could've been anyone but me for you."

Jason wrenches his head back, fights off the sting to have to admit to knowing exactly what Bruce means and lets out a scoff to say. "Guess neither one of us got what we wanted then, old man."

(It's not true but lie a little, lie a lot, and none of it really matters when all is said and done.)

It is grasping enough of Bruce's underlying intentions to know he thinks he doesn't deserve him, and there is something laughable to that, to find the two of them having been thinking of the same thought. There is plenty more that goes unsaid when the shirt finally falls too. The only things left are twisted into a single sense of purpose when Jason forces that last hand to have Bruce telling the truth once and for all.

And Jason can yell a lot of profanity but underneath the Red Hood, he wears the domino mask like he is still Robin. He calls it vengeance, but he comes back to it like it is home, settles into the crumbled concrete like it is a bed he's made for himself with sheets smelling just of Bruce.

Neither one of them are tied up but it still leaves them all sorts of tangled up inside.

His mouth tastes of blood, a dam-breaking flood of copper that leaves him cut wide open and bleeding freely by the time Bruce kisses his way back up.

 

Jason's never been accommodating, he isn't about to start now.

It is red and hot and slick when he opens his mouth wide, on his own accord, for him.

 

 

viii.

 

He's made his peace with death, he was always going to die.

When Bruce's fingers push inside of him, Jason wants the stretch of them to hurt if he is being honest. And he can be here with his eyes half lidded, lingering as they look to Bruce like there is still something between just the two of them aside from this wretched haunting little thing that refuses to be put to rest for good.

He keens into the pillow he's buried his face into when he moves his hips before he is ready. Seeking more of Bruce's touch and it is scorching.

He wishes Bruce feels it all the same to have his hands like hot iron brands against his skin. Fingers crossed and hope to die. It feels like there should be a metaphor in all of this but fuck, if Jason can figure it out with Bruce right here with him. Bruce bodily hulls him closer by a hand wrapped around his ankle, bringing it to rest the arc of Jason's foot over his shoulder, lifting him up at the hips until the stretch of the muscles in Jason's calves start to burn when Bruce makes him bend, almost neatly in half.

He replaces the tight fit of three digits for his cock, pushes in on a kindly controlled inhale before exhaling something heated, close enough to have Jason hold his gaze.

Bruce doesn't look away, and maybe this is what cements it.

 

"You're desperate for this."

Jason pants out, aiming to tease in the meanest way even as he hates how his hands have a tendency to linger, trailing over one scar to meet the next, tracking a constellation of pain across the broad span of Bruce's chest that is slick with sweat.

The soft rumbling noise could almost pass for amusement when it is coming out of Bruce and as he fucks him, he fucks him through and through. It is a practice in patience that neither one of them have drawn blood yet. The groan of the mattress underneath them and the headboard colliding into the wall in a brutal rhythm almost drowns out what Bruce murmurs to him.

"Then you haven't seen yourself, Jay."

 The quirk of Bruce's mouth against the salt of his skin, soft even as his answer razes the rest of Jason's words to the ground.

Both palms across Bruce's chest and Jason is pushing, shoving him back a good distance and drawing his legs back. He hates that he is helpless to reacting. Putting up enough of a fight that Bruce lets him, has him with his knees sinking into the mattress on each side of Bruce's hip as the man lays flat on his back.

It is not a win, not by a very long shot. But it is something and Jason is grasping at the last few straws here.

Bruce holds his gaze, blue eyes catching the sunlight from the slit in the curtains and Jason reacts by refusing to change the rhythm Bruce sets. Jason maintains the same pace, rising up on his knees just to grind himself down into Bruce's lap, reaching out to draw fresh blood when he drags the ragged edges of his bitten nails down Bruce's chest. It is more than simply letting Jason do as he pleases when Bruce is arching into it, and he is settling the score.

This is his body for the taking, his soul for the breaking, and Bruce finds himself thinking it's about damn time.

 

 

xi.

 

"I was yours but you are mine now."

Jason points out, voice steady, breathing out that first slow breath of nicotine he holds inside of his chest. Jason leaves just as many bruises on Bruce as a good fight would. Scratches that bleed to scabs that itch. And he leans over to pick at it even if he has no right to him. Looking almost childish in the claims he lays and lays.

“Yes,” Bruce tells a truth that is just as brutal even if he is much kinder in his delivery, “I am." He doesn't look away from how Jason's profile is lit up by the ember glow. "And, I always was.”

When Jason's hands catches his to settle them down over his hips, Bruce digs his fingers into the flesh until he can find the curve of his bones to take hold. He is solid and he is warm, almost feverish to the touch. When he looks at him, catching his eyes in the blue, his dark hair looking auburn in the sunlight streaming through, all Bruce sees is his Robin taking flight.

 

Bruce's bed isn't cold when he wakes up even if Jason has long since took off. Some time in the middle of the day because when has the night ever allowed for anything other than a good long grueling patrol. It is what comes after, where they are still here, entangled despite the soulbond that has long been snuffed out.

From the sunshine spreading like a wild fire in his room, Bruce's sheets are warm to the touch when his fingers span out against the soft cotton. The black out curtains are thrown wide open, the window left ajar to let in the warmest midday breeze. There is no lesson to learn from this, Bruce knows, but hope is a terrible thing that he carries in his chest.

 

He leaves but he always comes back.

The lingering heat is a start to the first stoke of fire.

 

 

 

 

 

x.

 

Like Jason's corpse that's gone cold to rot and rot and rot where he was buried, what they had died with him.

Through the entirety it takes for him to come back to life, between breaths full of dirt, it went a little bit like this: Fire in his eyes. Fire bleeding in his veins to burn and burn. There is no right memory that isn't a sharp, jagged edge in his head that is just as damaged. He cannot piece two things together to find a common seam. What he knows is this one thing though.

This is crucial, and the present tense here holds some kind of importance that he just can't figure out, but.

The mantra he knows is this: It's _Bruce_.

It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's Bruce. It's _always_ Bruce.

 

 


End file.
